Tournament reunites hockey dads 20 years later

One e-mail between friends who played hockey against each other more than 20 years ago turned into a weekend’s worth of goodwill and some impressive youth match-ups on the ice.

Joe Reardon

One e-mail between friends who played hockey against each other more than 20 years ago turned into a weekend’s worth of goodwill and some impressive youth match-ups on the ice.

The Parkway Hawks wrapped up their weekend Friendship Exchange Tournament at Roche Ice Arena on Monday against the Suroit Express teams from Montreal. Players of all ages spent Saturday at BU’s Walter Brown Arena. On Sunday, the action moved to Conte Forum on the Boston College campus.

The Friendship Exchange started to become a reality last March when Darren Wilding Googled “Roslindale Hockey.” He saw that Roslindale, West Roxbury and Jamaica Plain had joined together to form the Parkway Youth Hockey League.

When he went to the Parkway Youth Hockey Web site, he recognized one of the coaches, Brian Torpey, as a player who stayed at his home in Point St. Charles, Montreal, when Roslindale players traveled to Montreal to play Leo’s Boys in the late 1970s and early ’80s. When Leo’s Boys played in Roslindale, Wilding stayed in Torpey’s home.

“When I clicked on coaches, I saw Brian’s name,” said Wilding, the director of the Suroit Express squads. “We just tried to get this off the ground.”

Wilding e-mailed Torpey immediately, and the two caught up on a friendship more than two decades old. Wilding mentioned to Torpey how fun it would be to have a tournament similar to the one they played in as kids.

“He looked up Roslindale and saw it was Parkway now,” Torpey said. “He said he’d love to come down and play in a tournament. It sounds easy, but it’s a lot of work.”

Wilding, whose 13-year-old twin sons, Tanner and Tyler, played in the tournament, remembered his teenage hockey years well. “I was my sons’ age when I came down here to play,” he said.

The biggest obstacle was to secure the ice for two days. Parkway was able to nail down the open dates at Walter Brown and Conte Forum for the weekend games.

“They were very good venues for the Canadian kids,” said Torpey.

The tournament proved to be a huge success. On Sunday night, players, parents and coaches from both leagues gathered for a banquet at the Elks Lodge in West Roxbury before the final day of games.

“I wouldn’t have imagined it would have been so successful over one e-mail,” said Parkway Youth Hockey league President Nick McCummings. “It’s a great show of goodwill and friendship. It’s a great thing for Parkway. All the kids really enjoyed taking team pictures together after the games. It’s a positive thing for everybody.”

Torpey believed the banquet was the perfect setting for the players and parents to communicate with one another.

“It puts a face to the other team and that goes a long way,” Torpey said.

Wilding liked the tournament’s no-pressure change of pace.

“I’d like to see these teams come down to Montreal,” he said. “We go to tournaments and it’s all win, win, win at all cost. I wanted them to experience what I did as a kid. There’s not much of a difference [between American and Canadian styles], really. The main object was to have a friendship tournament. Now hockey’s all stress, stress. They [some parents] think hockey is a business. It’s a sport.”

West Roxbury’s Joe King, a seventh-grader at Nobles & Greenough, played on the Pee Wee A team for Parkway. The 12-year-old had the lone tally in a 5-1 loss to Suroit on Saturday at Walter Brown. King took a pass from behind the net and one-timed it past the goaltender to break up the shutout in the third period.

The center/right winger said it was tough getting used to the nonchecking aspect of the game. In the United States, leagues begin checking at the Pee Wee level, compared to the Bantam level in Canada.

“We couldn’t hit, so it was a little different,” King said at the banquet. “They were fast and good skaters. Their goalie was good; he was really good. They were tougher than the teams I’m used to playing. We definitely had to find a way to slow them down. We had to get a lot of shots and keep passing.”

Torpey added, “They’re not using any checking, but the kids are having fun. It’s exciting, something new.”

Prior to the games, the players exchanged gifts of hats and T-shirts. Along with pizza, salad, soft drinks and cookies, there were two large cakes, complete with the emblems of both teams.

Kameron Gingras, a center on the Bantam B team, chatted with one of the Canadian players in the face-off circle before the referee dropped the puck in one of Sunday’s games at Conte Forum.

“We talked a little bit about where we were from,” Gingras said.

The 13-year-old Catholic Memorial seventh-grader was impressed with the Suroit’s skill level.

“They work together and move a lot faster,” Gingras said. “They’re great skaters.”

Gingras picked up his 10th goal of the young season with a slap shot through traffic in Saturday’s 8-3 loss at Walter Brown. Heading into Monday’s action he was having a solid tourney for himself with a tally and a pair of assists.

Along with Torpey and Wilding, there were other coaches who played in the tourney as kids and remembered their time on the ice as if it were yesterday. Bantam B coach Tom O’Keefe said he’d like to see the tournament continue in the coming years.

“Parkway used to do it years ago and the kids then liked it,” he said. “Our kids skated with them pretty good today.”

Bantam A coach John Galofaro traveled to Canada to play in 1975 and ’76, and coach Rock Bastianelli played in the Great White North three consecutive years as a kid.

“It’s definitely come full circle,” said Galofaro. “In my memories, I really don’t have memories of the games, but of having fun with the other kids. I want them to take away friendships they might have for years to come.”

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